Their references, at the height of New York punk
then New Wave, were surf rock guitars, coffin-kickers like Screaming
Jay Hawkins and menacing spook-crawlers like Ronnie Hawkins' classic
cover of Bo Diddley's Who Do You Love (“I walk 47 miles of
barbed wire, I use a cobra-snake for a necktie . . .”)

The itinerant Cramps – fronted by Lux
Interior who died in 2009, and his wife/guitarist Poison Ivy –
brought drama, leopard skin pants, humour and a necessary sense of
history to the CBGBs punk scene.

While influencing garagebands, they
never got mainstream attention like Talking Heads, the Ramones and
Television. But they were constantly moving, to Memphis to record
with Alex Chilton (of the Box Tops/Big Star), to low-rent Hollywood,
and they embraced Sun Studio echo and a distinctive sleaze factor.

This 22 song collection of ragged,
cartoon rock'n'roll imbued with a deep love and understanding of the
genre is soaked in voodoo caricatures, rattling bones, rebel-kind
thinking and reverb.

They take on Surfin' Bird (which the Ramones also covered) and Jack Ross' The Way I Walk, Fever, The Crusher and other low-rent classics . . . and also throw in their own generically correct songs (one of them appropriating the Twist and Shout title).

It is ancient knowledge and in this time of
music manufactured for a marketplace, the title is timely and right:
“File Under Sacred Music”.

Elsewhere at Elsewhere

The press didn't rate them at the time, they had a solid and loyal following of largely uncool fans, and they themselves seemed to take it all as a joke. It was only rock'n'roll, but they liked it.... > Read more